Yesterday I read Richard Behrens' "The Case of the Purloined Curio " with Lizzie Borden, Girl Detective. Now that I've read at least one of the Girl Detective stories, it was easy to slip into this one. I didn't want to put it down and read it pretty much straight thru. I thought it was well plotted and extremely well written. Some of the imagery was striking, such as page 25, first column, where Abby's feather duster is compared to the flicking of a tiny bird. The humor of her dusting was great. You'd think nothing could be left to say about Abby and dusting, but Richard put an original spin on it. The humorous parts of the story worked for me - I was laughing out loud in some spots.
I do wonder if the use of "gentlemen" should have been "gentleman" in three instances (page 22 is one). If "gentlemen" truly was meant, I did not understand why. There was a use of "whose" (which I can't find in the story now) when someone was speaking who was saying "who has" (I think), and I wondered why it was written as "whose" instead of a contraction. I wouldn't think it had something to do with the person's dialect. When Tom says, "I always did want to be a musician," I thought I remembered that line from the first Girl Detective Story. It's a great line, but it didn't strike me nearly as funny as the first time I think I read it, because I had read it before. The scenes in the shrubs sound much like they were used in the first story. In any event, they are ringing a loud bell with me that no one else probably noticed.
Thank you for a wonderful, entertaining story, Richard. And I hope there are many more to follow.
